This invention relates to an apparatus for feeding rod-shaped articles in a packaging machine.
More specifically, this invention addresses the tobacco industry and has for an object an apparatus for feeding articles consisting, for example, of cigarettes, filters, filter tubes (tubes of paper with a filter at one end and designed to be filled with tobacco by the smoker) in a machine which packs these articles in packets or boxes.
Hereinafter in this description, reference is made to the handling of rod-shaped articles consisting of cigarettes, without thereby restricting the scope of the invention.
In apparatuses of known type for feeding cigarettes in a packaging machine, groups of cigarettes to be packed are usually formed using a vertical hopper into which the cigarettes are fed through an opening at the top of it. The bottom portion of the hopper is divided into a plurality of mouths arranged side by side horizontally and each divided by a plurality of walls into substantially vertical channels arranged side by side horizontally. Each of the channels is designed to receive into it a stack of cigarettes superposed on each other. Groups of cigarettes, or layers which are then placed on top of one another to form the groups, are extracted by suitable extractor elements in succession from the bottom of each hopper mouth and directed to a packing station.
In order to facilitate entry of the cigarettes into the channels, there is, located just above each of the vertical walls which laterally delimit the channels, a substantially cylindrical roller or rod which oscillates in both directions about an axis parallel to the axes of the cigarettes, thereby shaking the cigarettes lightly so they move down more easily.
The presence of the rollers positioned in this manner inevitably makes the lateral size of each mouth relatively large because the distance between the channels of each pair of adjacent channels must substantially be equal in size to the diameter of a cigarette plus the diameter of a roller. That means the transversal size of the hopper is quite considerable which in turn means that the packing machine the hopper is installed in has very bulky overall dimensions.